There stood a girl whose face was familiar but everything else quietly screamed otherwise. For starter, this girl was wearing a white long dress. The girl I knew would be wearing school uniform for almost all occasions like a manga character. The dress was fluttering in the mild breeze, as lively as the girl wearing it.

'Kyon? Are you okay? Hello?' The girl asked, hands behind her back, with her head tilting to the side to look at me, while I had my mouth opened with no words. Her eyes were soulful. She finished her sentence with a little 'glad-to-see-you' smile.

She looked like Nagato, but she sure was not acting like Nagato. She was cute in her ways before, but she's so much cuter like this...

And in case those who had a fetish with glasses were curious, she was wearing glasses.

She had never talked like this. I had never seen her smile. I did not recall if she ever tilted to her side looking at anyone ever. I bet if she had to walk under an opening slightly shorter than her she would just bend her knees and limbo under it rather than tilting her head. Okay, so she did act similarly in the other world that she created, but she's not the same as that version either. While I was glad to see her, I was having trouble accepting that she was indeed Nagato.

'Nagato?' That's the best I could do at the moment.

She lowered one of her eyebrows with a judging expression and said, 'Yes?' Another facial expression. That was twice as many facial expressions I saw on her in most days, and she said the word 'yes' by raising the pitch. I felt like a baby, receiving new stimulation one after another for the first time. Cute, and cuter…

She continued, 'You don't look so well.' She stood up straight, looked up, placing her left hand under her right elbow and her right index finger on her right cheek, biting her lower lip, and continued, 'I hope I don't have to carry you home or something…' Did she just bite her lips? Did she just crack a joke? She looked at me. I was going to lose it. She's on the level of Ms Asahina's cuteness, without even trying.

Thank goodness it was dark because my face had to be flushing bright red. I tried to shake it off. 'No, no, I am fine. Sorry. Uh... good to see you… sorry about blanking out. What happened to you today? You missed school and you did not respond to my call.'

'Oh, I had a bad headache earlier and stayed home. My phone's probably off.'

I pulled out the bookmark and asked, 'Did you write this?'

She looked a bit confused. Yes - Nagato was looking confused. Stimulation overload.

She said, 'I don't remember… where did you find it?'

'I thought you left me this in a book at the clubroom so I could meet you here at this hour.'

'Oh? Are you pulling my legs?' She gave me the judge-y, but with a bit of mischievous look that was one of Haruhi's trademark looks, and she did it just as well. 'You told me yesterday to meet you here.'

'I did?' That did not add up, but I probably should go along with the flow. 'Oh yes. Hahaha, haha, almost got you there!'

She laughed, as she placed her fingers over her mouth, partially hiding it. That laugh and that gesture was something out of this world. It was the first time I heard her laugh. It was angelic, it was so precious. I just had my mind blown. I thought a tear came out, with a dozen more loaded just under my corneas ready to burst out.

We went on with our conversation for another 20 minutes or so. During that time I asked her stuff only Nagato would know. What I concluded was that she knew details about the Nagato I knew, but whenever it had to do with aliens, time traveling, esper, Haruhi's God-like power, those memories were either altered or erased. For example, she remembered inviting me to her house and chatted, but did not recall anything about her monologue about her being an alien; she said we only talked about Haruhi and the literary club. She had no recollection of fighting Ryoko Asakura; she only remembered Asakura was in my class who used to live in the same apartment as she was but went off to Canada suddenly to study abroad. She did not remember fighting a giant cricket in another dimension; she only remembered we went to look for the computer president in his room, first time he's not there but then he was there the second time, lying on the floor passed out. She did not remember doing anything unusual that led us to victory in our baseball game; she said it was all thanks to 'lady luck'. She did not remember she hacked into the computer game and rewrote code on the fly so we could win the game; she only remembered catching the computer club cheating, and we won by default. She completely disregarded my 'joke' about Ms Asahina and I visited her home almost 4 years ago and slept in one of her rooms for 3 years. Okay, I did NOT ask her all those questions straight out, I beat around the bushes a lot but you got the picture.

She thought everyone in the SOS brigade was ordinary high schoolers.

She finally asked me why I asked her out, surely I wasn't just trying to reminisce. I came up with an excuse quickly… 'You know, the SOS brigade anniversary is coming up. Do you have any ideas what we should get for Haruhi?'

She thought for a while and said if I really needed her help, she'd come up with something for me, but she needed a couple days to think about it.

Feeling that I did not want to push the reality further until I spoke with Koizumi and Ms Asahina, we said goodbye and went separate ways. I called Koizumi and told him what happened. He was stumped just as I did. He did agree we should observe this version of Nagato for a little more before deciding what to do. I then called Ms Asahina and told her about Nagato so she would know how to react around her.

Tuesday

In the morning I got to class, sat down, my mind continued to drift off thinking about Nagato and last night's encounter. There was no denying that it was nothing less than dreamy, from the time she showed up in her white dress, to the point I tossed and turned the entire night and pretty much accepted she was somehow the same Nagato and that she began to live a 'normal' life - the beauty of it was impossible to explain. The old Nagato was calm and confident, and so was this new one, but she was so natural and human-ly. Was this Nagato the perfect Nagato? I wondered if she still had her powers? I was so occupied with questioning her and convincing myself she was Nagato, I totally forgot about her powers. I had to test it out later.

Haruhi came into the class, sat behind me and started talking to me excitingly without me even acknowledging her - typical Haruhi. She said yesterday she met a real nice old man in his 70s who was one of the hosts at the convention, and she's convinced that he was the real deal - 'I just know it' was her own words. He was giving a brief talk to the group about historic events that had proofs of time travelers, aliens and etc. He even claimed to have dealt with some of them a long time ago, and he could even show us how to identify them when he saw them. Haruhi thought this man could help her find some of these people finally, and she's going back today for another open talk session. Sure, whatever. That could not be more interesting than what happened to Nagato. Speaking of which, I wondered how Haruhi would react to see the new Nagato. She then ordered me to inform everyone to meet at the club room during lunch time, which I dutifully did.

'Oh one last thing.'

Oh Lord Almighty, leave me alone already.

She continued, 'I noticed Ms Tsuruya was watching us from a distance at the convention yesterday.' She added.

'What's so wrong about that?'

'In the frog suit?'

'Oh… uh… let me talk to her for you. Okay?' That's not good. I better find Ms Tsuruya and get my lie - story - straight.

At break time I had a surprise visit at the men's room. It was Asakura in the frog suit.

'What are you doing in here?' I was startled.

'Pull your zipper up if you are not comfortable.'

'That's not it… this is the men's room… why are you in here?'

Asakura telepathically locked the men's room. My life was truly in her hands. 'To come and warn you about something,' she casually responded.

At least she did not pull my zipper up for me. I pulled my zipper up and said, 'Before that, could you explain what happened to Nagato? You said Nagato was gone yesterday. Why was she, uh, sort of, back, and was she really Nagato?'

Her face brightened up and said, 'You like the new Nagato? I made it happen.'

'You did?'

'Yes, I was eavesdropping yesterday when you said you were to tell Ms Suzumiya the whole truth. I relayed your statements to the Data Integration Thought Entity. They decided they did not want to make an enemy out of you and Ms Suzumiya, so they agreed to send a modified version of Nagato to hang out with you as a peace offering. As I said, Nagato was relieved of her duty, and I am your protector now. It is a fair compromise, right? Do you like her new personality?'

'So it was you who materialized a bookmark in the book and pushed the book off the shelf telepathically?'

'Yes. It was well-known that Nagato used similar method to communicate with you in the past. I kept the message vague just in case we needed more time getting her ready. Anyways, back to why I am here. I want to warn you about that old man Haruhi was seeing yesterday. Something was not right about him, but I am not sure why.'

'You know, Asakura, I still have a difficult time trusting you.'

'Get over it!'

'Easy for you to say!'

'Like I said, I'm only doing my job. If you are done, you may go.' I heard the door of the men's room unlocked.

'One other thing, Asakura, Haruhi spotted you yesterday. Could you perhaps be more careful and not get spotted?'

'Okay, not a problem.'

I decided to be courteous and thanked Asakura, left the men's room and went to another men's room to finish my business.

At lunch time I went to the club room and Nagato, Koizumi and Ms Asahina were already there. Nagato sat at her usual chair and was reading a book. She smiled at me as I walked in. Koizumi and Ms Asahina were at their best behavior trying not to act differently in front of the new Nagato. Haruhi came in shortly after with a big smile and asked who would go with her today for the second day meet at the convention. Thinking back, I guessed I should be more interested in that but at the time I was too busy thinking about what I should do about Nagato.

'Hey Yuki, you want to come with us?' Haruhi asked.

'Yeah, that sounds like fun.' I knew Nagato probably would not resist a convention at a bookstore. Her way of responding surprised Haruhi a little.

'Wow, Yuki, I like your enthusiasm! Mikuru, are you coming too? You would like to meet with Mr. Hasegawa again, right?'

'Oh, I'd love to. He was such a gentleman. He even gave me a calligraphy set yesterday. Unfortunately I have cleaning duties today. How about tomorrow, would that be okay?'

'Alright. How about you, brigade member number 2 and brigade member number 5?'

Koizumi said, 'I'm afraid I can't today.'

'What? Koizumi you have better clear your schedule or I'm going to start handling penalties to you!'

'Sorry ma'am. Understood.'

She looked at me.

I said, 'A couple more days please?'

Haruhi was not happy but was not overly displeased, it seemed the convention itself was enough to keep her mind busy; we would just be there taking up space and wasting precious oxygen for the other hundreds of nerds there anyways.

On the way home, Koizumi and I had a little chat about Nagato.

'Koizumi, remember the discussion we had not long ago? That the Data Integration Thought Entity was able to create human replicas and stuff? Do you think this current Nagato is the actual human that's been frozen for the past 4 years and now got thawed out with updated memory or something?'

'I don't think so. You said you met Ms Nagato 4 years ago and she looked the same. Why would the Nagato we knew be created to look like a high schooler if her real self was still a middle schooler? If she was frozen and was recently thawed, shouldn't she look like a middle schooler then?'

'What if the human Nagato was a high schooler 4 years ago?'

'Kyon, how about her family? Who's supporting her? If she has relatives why are they not contacting her?'

'In other words, despite the current Nagato's ability to show a wide spectrum of emotions, she's still…'

'A humanoid interface. Yes.'

"Performing acts that appear emotional does not require understanding of emotions" - Nagato said that not longer ago. So, it was very likely the current Nagato did not experience true emotions. However, how did human experience true emotions? Did we not take time to learn and comprehend? Just because Nagato did not understand emotions, it did not mean she would never learn to. All I truly wanted was to see Nagato experience true happiness.

I got home and worked on my sister's science project all the way till midnight, then went to bed. Things were getting better, I thought to myself.